영어학개론
언어
(Language),
형태론
(Morphology)
1. What is language?
1. Knowledge of the Sound System
- Knowing a language means knowing what sounds (or signs) are in that language and what sounds are
not.
Knowing the sound system of a language includes more than knowing the inventory of sounds.
It means also knowing which sounds may start a word, end a word, and follow each other.
(e.g. Nkrumah(Ghana)—sink(English))
2. Knowledge of Words
- The relationship between speech sounds and the meanings they represent is, for the most part, an ar-
bitrary
one. When you are acquiring a language you have to learn that the sounds represented by the letters
house signify the concept ; if you know French, this same meaning is represented by maison;
If you know Russian, by dom; if you know Spanish, by casa.
- Similarly, is represented by hand in English, main in French, nsa in Twi, and ruka in Russian.
- The same sequence of sounds can represent different meanings in different languages:
“bolna” means ‘speak’ in Hindu-Urdu and ‘aching’ in Russian,
“bis” means ‘devil’ in Ukrainian and ‘twice’ in Latin,
“pet” means ‘a domestic animal’ in English and ‘a fart’ in Catalan
“taka” means ‘hawk’ in Japanese, ‘fist’ in Quechua, ‘a small bird’ in Zulu, and ‘money’ in Bengali.
3. The Creativity of Linguistic Knowledge
-
Knowledge of a language enables you to combine sounds to form words, words to
form phrases, and phrases to form sentence. Knowing a language means being able
to produce and understand new sentences never spoken before. This is the creative
aspect of language.
e.g.) This is the house.
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that
lay in the house that Jack built.
4. Linguistic Knowledge and Performance
- Speakers of all languages have the knowledge to understand or produce sentences of
any length in a language: linguistic competence(언어능력)
- Speakers can apply and use this knowledge in actual speech production and compre-
hension:
linguistic performance (언어수행) –-called Language use(언어사용)
5. What is Grammar?
- The grammar is the knowledge speakers have about the units and rules of their language :
rules for combining sounds into words (called phonetics(음성학), phonology(음운론)),
rules of word formation with the attachment of affixes or combination of words
(called morphology(형태론)),
rules for combining words into phrases and phrases into sentences (called syntax(통사론)),
as well as the rules for assigning meaning (called semantics(의미론))
- The grammar, together with a mental dictionary (called a lexicon:어휘목록) that lists the words
of the language, represents our linguistic competence.
- To understand the nature of language we must understand the nature of grammar.
6. Universal Grammar
- A majority of linguists support Chomsky’s view that a Universal Grammar(UG) that is part of
the biologically endowed human language faculty. We can think of UG as the blueprint that
all languages follow that forms part of the child’s innate capacity for language learning.
- It specifies the different components of the grammar and their relations, how the different rules
of these components are constructed, how they interact, and so on.
- A major aim of linguistic theory is to discover the nature of UG.
1<1>
2. Morphology(형태론): The Words of Language
0. Lexicon(어휘목록): mental dictionary
Knowing a word means knowing that a particular sequence of sounds is associated with a particular meaning.
A speaker of English has no difficulty in segmenting the stream of sounds into six individual words Thecat-
satonthemat because each of these words is listed in his or her mental dictionary, or lexicon
—a part of a speaker’s linguistic knowledge. Similarly, a speaker knows that uncharacteristically,
which has more letters than Thecatsatonthemat, is nevertheless a single word.
1. Content Words and Function Words(내용어와 기능어)
Content words denote concepts such as objects, action, attributes and ideas: nouns, verbs, adjectives, ad-
verbs, interrogative pronouns, indicative pronouns, indefinite pronouns, exclamations
-> open class words (composing meaningful content)
Function words do not have clear lexical meanings or obvious concepts associated with them: conjunction,
preposition, articles, auxiliaries, indicative adjectives, personal pronoun, relative pronoun, reflexive pronoun
-> closed class words (composing additional function)
================
-
Question: Are the words in the following sentence content words or function words?
1. Children can acquire any language they are exposed to with comparable ease.
2. The words themselves will recombine to form phrases and sentences.
3. When we say that a sentence is grammatical we mean that it conforms to the rules
of the mental grammar.
2. Morphemes(형태소): The Minimal Units of Meaning
- A morpheme which is a minimal linguistic unit is an arbitrary union of a sound and a meaning that
cannot be further analyzed: a morpheme is a smallest meaningful unit of a word.
e.g.) meaningless = mean + ing + less (3 morphemes)
- Morphology(형태론) refers to our internal grammatical knowledge concerning the words of our lan-
guage,
and like most linguistic knowledge we are not consciously aware of it.
- All the words in column B consist of at least two meaningful units with the same meaning ‘not’ :
un+desirable, un+likely, and so on.
A: desirable B: undesirable
likely unlikely
inspired uninspired
happy unhappy
C: desire like
desirable likely
undesirable unlikely
- Phon- is a minimal form in that it can’t be decomposed.
- Phone- has the identical meaning ‘pertaining to sound’.
phone phonology phoneme
phonetic phonologist phonemic
phonetics phonological allophone
phonetician telephone euphonious
- A single word may be composed of one or more morphemes:
one morpheme boy
desire
two morphemes boy + ish
desire + able
three morphemes boy + ish + ness
desire + able + ity
four morphemes gentle + man + li + ness
un + desire + able + ity
- A morpheme may be represented by a single sound: amoral, asexual ( a- meaning ‘without’)
A morpheme can be consist of a single syllable or more than one syllable:
child + ish (an adjectival morpheme -ish is a single syllable)
camel, lady, water (with two syllables)
Hackensack, crocodile (with three syllables)
accelerate, helicopter, apothecary (four or more syllables) 1<2>
3. The Discreteness of Morphemes(형태소 분류)
- Agentive morpheme –er means ‘one who does’: singer, painter, lover, worker, …
- Comparative morpheme –er means functional parts in adverbs and adjectives: nicer, prettier, taller,
smaller,…
- The two morphemes –er and –ster have the same meaning: both singer and songster mean ‘one who
sings’.
cf) Monomorphemic words(단일형태소 단어): finger, butter, buttress, monster,
cf) youngster ( dimorphemic word)
- This follows from the concept of the morpheme as a sound plus a meaning unit.
4. Bound and Free Morphemes(의존형태소와 자립형태소)
- Bound Morphemes attach at the beginning, the end, in the middle, or both at the beginning and end
of a word, as parts of words.
e.g.) -ish, -ness, -ly, -pre-, trans-, un-, …
- Free Morphemes can stand alone and constitute words by themselves.
e.g.) boy, desire, gentle, man, …
- prefixes, suffixes, infixes, circumfixes: p. 40-42
5. Roots and Stems(어근과 어간)
- Morphologically complex words consist of a morpheme root and one or more affixes.
Some examples of English roots are paint in painter, read in reread, ceive in conceive, and ling in lin-
guist.
- A root may or may not stand alone as a word(paint and read do; ceive and ling don’t).
- When a root morpheme is combined with an affix, it forms a stem. Other affixes can be added to a
stem
to form a more complex stem.
- unsystematically
root system noun
stem system + atic noun + suffix
stem un + system + atic prefix + noun + suffix
stem un + system + atic + al prefix + noun + suffix + suffix
word un + system + atic + al + ly prefix + noun + suffix + suffix + suffix
- unbelievable
root believe verb
stem believe + able verb + suffix
stem un + believe + able prefix + verb + suffix
cf ) believe + able, un + believe + able un + believe + able
root, stem root stem
- Bound Roots(의존어근)
1. Bound roots do not occur in isolation and they acquire meaning only in combination with other mor-
phemes.
For example, words of Latin origin such as receive, conceive, perceive, and deceive share a common
root,
-ceive; and the words remit, permit, commit, submit, transmit, and admit share the root -mit.
2. For the original Latin speakers, the morphemes corresponding to ceive an mit had clear meanings, but for
modern English speakers, Latinate morphemes such as ceive and mit have no independent meaning.
Their meaning depends on the entire word in which they occur.
3. A similar class of words is composed of a prefix affixed to a bound root morpheme.
In the words such as ungainly, discern, nonplussed, downhearted, the underlined parts are bound roots.
These bound roots cannot be independent words but stand as the words only when prefixes are added to
the bound roots
================
- Question:
1. What are the bound roots in the words huckleberry and lukewarm?
2. Explain the process of the word formation of a word unrewritable. 1<3>
6. Rules of Word Formation(단어형성규칙)
- Most English speakers would immediately know the meaning of uglification because they would
know the
meaning of its individual parts – the root ugly and the affixes –ify and –cation.
- Knowledge of morphology includes knowledge of individual morphemes, their pronunciation, and
their meaning, and knowledge of the rules for combining morphemes into complex words.
- Morphological rules of English, a new word can be created:
Adjective + ify -> Verb
ugly + ify -> uglify
pure + ify -> purify
ample + ify -> amplify
simple + ify -> simplify
false + ify -> falsify
Verb + cation -> Noun
uglify + cation -> uglification
glorify + cation -> glorification
simplify + cation -> simplification
falsify + cation -> falsification
purify + cation -> purification
cf) -ify can be conjoined with nouns and form verbs: objectify, glorify, personify
7. Derivational Morphology(파생형태론)
- Bound morphemes like –ify, -cation and –arian are called derivational morphemes(파생형태소):
When they are added to a base, a new word with a new meaning is derived. The addition of –ify to pure
--purify—means ‘to make pure,’ and the addition of –cation—purification—means ‘the process of mak-
ing pure.’
- The form that results from the addition of a derivational morpheme is called a derived word(파생어).
When a derivational morpheme is added to a base, it adds meaning. The derived word may also be of a
different grammatical class than the original word.
e.g.) When a verb is suffixed with –able, the result is an adjective. -> desire(v)+able=desirable(a).
When the suffix –en is added to an adjective, a verb is derived. -> dark(a)+en=darken(v).
A noun is formed from an adjective. -> sweet(adj)+ie=sweetie(n).
- Refer to other examples in p. 45
(Some derivational affixes do not cause a change in grammatical class. --see p. 45
- Derivational affixes appear to come in two classes:
Class I : -ous, -ity, -ive, -able, -ible, -y, -ize, -ion, -an, …
Class II : -er, -ful, -ish, -less, -ly, -ness, -ism, -ist, …
- The addition of an affix class I triggers subtle changes in pronunciation.
specific specificity Elizabeth Elizabethan
/k/ /s/ /ɛ/ /i/
sane sanity deduce deductive critic criticize
/ei/ /æ/ /s/ /k/ /k/ /s/
- The addition of an affix class II doen’t trigger changes in pronunciation.
baker, wishful, boyish, needless, sanely, fullness, …
- Affixes from the class I cannot be attached to a base containing an affix from the class II:
*need + less + ity *moral + ize + ive
(II) (I) (II) (I)
- Affixes from the class II may attach to bases with either kind of affix:
moral + iz(e) + er need + less+ ness object + iv(e) + ism
(I) (II) (II) (II) (I) (II) 2<1>
8. Inflectional Morphology(굴절형태론)
- Bound morphemes that have a strictly grammatical function mark properties such as tense, number, person,
and so forth. Such bound morphemes are called inflectional morphemes(굴절형태소).
Unlike derivational morphemes, they never change the grammatical category of the stems to
which they are attached.
Modern English has only eight bound inflectional affixes:
English Inflectional Morphemes Examples
1. -s third-person singular present She waits at home.
2. -ed past tense She waited at home.
3. -ing progressive She is eating the donut.
4. -en past participle Mary has eaten the donuts.
5. -s plural She ate the donuts.
6. -’s possessive Disa’s hair is short.
7. -er comparative Disa has shorter hair than Karin.
8. -est superlative Disa has the shortest hair.
# Inflectional morphemes in English follow the derivational morphemes in a word.
commitments: commit + ment + s
(der. m) (inf. m)
Inflectional Derivational
Grammatical function Lexical function
No word class change May cause word class change
Small or no meaning change Some meaning change
Often required by rules of grammar Never required by rules of grammar
Follow derivational morphemes in a word Precede inflectional morphemes in a word
Productive Some productive, many nonproductive
- Classification of English morphemes with a hierarchical structure : Refer to page 49
9. The Hierarchical Structure of Words
- A word is not a simple sequence of morphemes but has an internal hierarchical structure.
The word unsystematic is composed of three morphemes: un-, system, and –atic. The root is sys-
tem, a noun,
to which we add the suffix –atic, resulting in an adjective, systematic. To this adjective, we add the
prefix un-,
forming a new adjective, unsystematic.
- In order to represent the hierarchical organization of words, linguists use tree diagrams as follows:
Adjective The application of two morphological rules:
un Adjective 1. Noun + ataic Adjective
Noun atic 2. un + Adjective Adjective
system
- Human language is rule-governed.
- Hierarchical structure is an essential property of human language. Words (and sentences) have component
parts, which relate to each other in specific, rule-governed ways.
- Further morphological rules:
➀ English has a derivational suffix –al, as in egotistical, fantastical, and astronomical. In these cases, -al is
added to an adjective—egotistic, fantastic, astronomic—to form a new adjective.
3. Adjective + al Adjective
(egotistic + al = egotistical)
➁
Another affix is –ly, which is added to adjectives—happy, lazy, hopeful—to form adverbs happily, lazily,
hopefully.
4. Adjective + ly Adverb
(happy + ly = happily)
➂
Applying these two rules to the derived form unsystematic, we get the following tree for unsystematically
with derivational affixes.
Adverb
Adjective ly
Adjective al
un Adjective
Noun atic
system
- Inflectional morphemes are equally well represented.
The inflectional morpheme –s follows the derivational morphemes –ize and re- in refinalizes:
Fill in the blanks with proper grammatical categories.
( )
Verb s
re ( )
( ) ize
final
- Morphological ambiguity(형태론적 중의성)
The hierarchical organization of words is more clearly shown by structurally ambiguous words:
e.g.) unlockable, unbuttonable, unzippable, unlatchable, …
Adjective Adjective
un Adjective Verb able
Verb able un Verb
lock lock
‘not able to be locked’ ‘able to be unlocked’ 2<2>
10. Rule Productivity
- Inflectional morphemes are productive because they can be freely to form new words with reg-
ular affixal forms.
- Some of the derivational morphemes are also productive:
➀ The suffix –able can be conjoined with any verb to derive an adjective. --- Verb + able = Adjective
e.g.) accept + able
laugh + able
pass + able
change + able
breathe + able
adapt + able
➁ The prefix un- can be added to derived adjectives that have been formed by morphological rules:
e.g.) believe + able pick + up + able
un + believe + able un + pick + up + able
“un-Rule” is most productive for adjectives that are derived from verbs, such as unenlightened,
unsimplified, uncharacterized, unauthorized, undistinguished.
cf) unfit, uncool, unread, unclean, unhappy, uncowardly
*unbig, *ungreat, *unred, *unsad, *unsmall, *untall, *unbrave, *unobvious
➂ The rule that adds an –er to verbs in English to produce a noun meaning ‘one who does’ is produc-
tive:
e.g.) examiner, exam-taker, analyzer, lover, hunter, ….
================
Question:
1. Consider if other derivational morphemes are productive.
Find out the examples that the suffix –ity, -th and –en is found in many English words,
resulting in noun or verb form.
2. Generally, we can predict the meaning based on the meanings of the morphemes that make up the
word.
However, we cannot always know the meaning of the words derived from free and derivational
morphemes, i.e., there are un- forms including unpredictable meanings. Give the related examples
and write their meanings.
================
- Exceptions and Suppletions:
# irregular inflectional forms
➀ irregular plural nouns: children, mice, feet, sheep, …
➁ irregular past tense verbs: went, sang, brought, ran, knew, hit, …
➂ irregular comparative forms: worse(*badder), better(*gooder), …
- Yesterday you hit the ball.
- The sheep are in the meadow.
# regular plural inflectional forms: geek geeks, *geeken
fax faxes, *faxen
datum data, *datums
cf) ox oxen, *oxes
cf) The police ringed the bank with armed men.
*The police rang the bank with armed men.
flied out / *flew out (The verb ‘flied out’ came from the compound noun ‘fly ball’)
flatfoot two flatfoots / *two flatfeet
footman footmen / *footmans, *feetman, *feetmen
mother-in-law mothers-in-law / *mother-in-laws
court-martial courts-martial
attorney general attorneys general, attorney generals
2<3>
11. Lexical Gaps
- “Words” that conform to the rules of word formation but are not truly part of the vocabulary are
called
accidental gaps or lexical gaps.
- The words such as clunt, spleek, flig and the morphological derivations such as disobvious or inobvi-
ous
are a permissible sound sequences but they do not exist in English.
- Similarly, blick, slarm, or krobe not present in English but the first sounds bl-, sl-, kr- are possible
sequences in English. These words show accidental gaps that are well-formed but non-existing
words.
- Possible but nonexisting words such as *magnificenter or *disobvious are accidental gaps,
the word forms more magnificent or nonobvious exist instead.
cf) Does the word, bnick, show an accidental gap?
*unsystem, *needlessity(II+I)
These forms are not lexical gaps because they are impossible and so nonexisting words in
English.
12. Other Morphological Processes
(1) Back-Formations(역형성)
When a new word enters the language because of an incorrect morphological analysis, the word is
called
back-formation. The word peddle was derived from peddler on the mistaken assumption that the
–er was
the agentive suffix.
In this way, the verbs hawk, stoke, swindle, burgle and edit are derived from hawker, stoker,
swindler, burglar and editor as back-formations. The singular form pea is derived from a plural
word pease.
The new words were formed from the existing words as back-formations.
act action
exempt exemption
revise revision
resurrect resurrection
preempt preemption
televise television
(2) Compounds
- Two or more words may be joined to form new, compound words. English is very flexible in the kinds of
combinations permitted.
Adjective Noun Verb
Adjective bittersweet poorhouse whitewash
Noun headstrong homework spoonfeed
Verb feel-good pickpocket sleepwalk
- When the two words are in the same grammatical category, the compound will also be in this category:
noun + noun = noun adjective + adjective = adjective
girlfriend icy-cold
fighter-bomber red-hot
worldly wise
- In English, the rightmost word in a compound is the head of the compound. The head is the part of a
word or phrase that determines its broad meaning and grammatical category.
noun + adjective = adjective verb + noun = noun
headstrong pickpocket
cf) Prepositions form a closed class category that does not readily admit new members.
Compounds formed with a preposition are in the category of the non prepositional part of the com-
pound
such as overtake(v) or sundown(n).
cf) The meaning of a compound is not always the sum of the meanings of its parts; a blackboard may
be
green or white. Not everyone who wears a red coat is a Redcoat.
3<1>
(3) Coinage(신조어)
Coinage can be created for some purpose or specific brand names of products:
Xerox, Kodak, Vaseline, Kleenex(from clean), Jell-O(from gel)
(4) Acronym(두음문자)
Acronyms are derived from the initials of several words which may also be pronounced as
the spelling indicates:
NASA(National Aeronautics and Space Administration): 미항공우주국
UNICEF(United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization): 국제연합교육과학문화기구
PIN(Personal Identification Number): 개인식별번호
CUNY(City University of New York): 뉴욕시립대학교
(5) Abbreviation(약어)
This is abbreviated from the initials of some words.
FBI(Federal Bureau of Investigation): 미연방수사국
BBC(British Broadcasting Corporation): 영국공영방송사
ATM(Automated Teller Machine): 현금자동입출금기
(6) Blending(혼합)
Blending is formed by partial deletion and combination of two words:
smog (smoke + fog) brunch (breakfast + lunch)
transistor (transfer + resistor) escalator (escalade + elevator)
sitcom (situation + comedy) tigon (tiger + lion)
(7) Clipping(절단)
This is the case that represents the whole meaning of the word as cutting a part of a word:
phone (telephone) photo (photograph)
lab (laboratory) dorm (dormitory)
exam (examination) math (mathematics)
gym (gymnasium) bus (omnibus)
plane (airplane) gas (gasoline)
ad (advertisement) prof (professor)
cf) Irregular clipping: sepcs (spectacles), bike (bicycle), fax (facsimile),
mike (microphone), cuke (cucumber), …
3<2>
Summary
1. 우리는 언어를 사용할 수 있는 문법체계를 머리 속에 가지고 태어난다.
따라서 우리 모두는 언어를 습득할 수 있는 언어능력이 있다
.
2. 언어는 문법화되었으며 그 문법을 이용하여 단어, 구절, 문장과 같은 형태로 다양하게 실현된다.
3. 그러한 문법은 규칙적으로 체계화되어 있으며 그 규칙은 형태론, 통사론, 의미론, 음성학과 음운론의
각 분야에서 나타날 수 있다
. 형태론은 단어형성규칙으로, 통사론은 문장구조문법(변형문법)으로,
의미론은 문서 또는 상황에 따라 다양한 의미해석 규칙으로
, 음성학과 음운론은 말소리의 규칙적 배열과
가능한 소리변화에 대한 음운규칙으로 언어의 특징들을 나타낼 수 있다
.
4. 형태론은 단어나 어휘의 의미 단위를 구분해 내는 것을 중점으로 하며 이것을 바탕으로 다른 의미 있는
단위가 부가되므로써 형성되는 어휘의 문법과 의미를 연구한다
.
5. 형태론은 어근,어간, 접사의 조합으로 단어를 형성할 때의 규칙을 규명하며 의미 있는 단위들의
결합 관계를 논한다
.
6. 어휘의 형태론적 의미는 통사론적 구조와도 밀접한 관련이 있다.
Question:
1. Write the meanings of the three or more-word compounds like these:
three-time loser
four-dimensional space-time
sergeant-at-arms
mother-of-pearl
man about town
master of ceremonies
daughter-in-law
2. Compounds shows ambiguity since they have their internal structure. A compound ‘top hat rack’ can be
interpreted with two meanings. Explain the meanings using the structures in tree diagrams.
3. Consider the meaning relations between the parts. What is the difference between the two parts in mean-
ing
relations?
part 1: boathouse, jumping bean, falling star, magnifying glass
part 2: cathouse, looking glass, eating apple, laughing gas
part 1’: peanut oil, olive oil
part 2’: baby oil
4. Write the meaning relations of the compounds in the sentence “horse meat is dog meat”?
5. Many compounds do not seem to relate to the meanings of the individual parts at all.
What are the meaning of these?: jack-in-a –box, turncoat, highbrow, bigwig, egghead
6. For exercises, answer the question of the number 2, 3, 4 on the page 67. 3<3>
